On the Stanford game this Friday “Quick turnaround so we got right back to it. Got home pretty late from Arizona, but kind of bounced right in to Stanford. As far as the hype and all that we’ve been kind of too busy to read into all of it with the short week and all that.”

On facing Stanford for the first time “They’ve been the team to beat basically for the past couple years. I definitely watched them last year because I was kind of hoping I was going to play. Ended up not being able to play, so just been watching a lot of them this year and they’re very sound and all that. They’re going to make you earn it. We’ll see. We’re just getting ready and getting ready to play.”

How do you balance feeling the energy and ignoring the hype? “It’s just finding that happy medium where you feel like you have the intensity of it. You’re not too calm to where you kind of move lethargically, but then also making sure you don’t get too hyped up. Quarterback is a different position. You have to find that happy medium, because you’re not just going against one person. It’s not thinking of ‘okay, I want to beat that guy.’ You have to think schematically and all that. Just finding the happy medium, but we’ve played a lot of games. But going into my fifth game as a sophomore, you don’t have the freshman excuse of the big moment anymore. You just have to move on from that sooner or later.”

Is a short week like cramming for a test? “Yeah, I guess, but they have to do it too. Both teams are feeling that, so whoever is going to deal with that the best and come out and play the best.”

What did you take from watching the Stanford game last year from the sideline? “They’re a sound team, good tackling team. It’s going to be a good game. You’re going to have to earn it and you’re going to have to execute well. It’s not a team you can have a couple turnovers against or a couple bad plays, missed opportunities against, you have to make them count. I think the big thing is they make you earn it. You just have to execute really well at a high level like always.”